In the summer of 2010, Roth was an 18-year-old NIH intern entering Stanford in the fall. His job was to shave down a small piece of a mouse's skull so that researchers could see how the brain reacted to meningitis under a high-powered microscope.

Roth was terrible at that job. He kept giving the mice concussions, screwing up the results.

After some initial frustration, the researchers realized Roth's mistakes had led to something important — they could basically watch what happens in the brain during a concussion.

From SI:

"Mouse after mouse was concussed, but something valuable did come of the process. Roth and McGavern observed in the subsequent images of the rodents’ brains a flurry of action—leakage from blood vessels lining the skull seeping down and causing brain damage. Towards the end of the summer, the two started talking about what they had seen in the concussed mice. Roth, a former high school wrestler and a Rams fan, connected the dots. 'We saw the brain operating in ways no one had ever recorded before, and right around the same time, traumatic brain injury was becoming a hot topic,' Roth says. 'People were starting to realize how detrimental it was in the NFL and for guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.'"